Electronic systems and circuits have made a significant contribution towards the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous electronic technologies such as digital computers, calculators, audio devices, video equipment, and telephone systems facilitate increased productivity and cost reduction in analyzing and communicating data, ideas and trends in most areas of business, science, education and entertainment. Often these advantageous results are achieved through the use of distributed resources that communicate with each other over a network. To obtain maximized performance from distributed resources it is usually critical for the communication devices to be maintained at performance levels that support rapid and reliable communication of information. Advances in the performance capabilities of modern network communications are increasing the demand for efficient and network management and maintenance operations capable of addressing complicated troubleshooting problems.
Tremendous growth in communication traffic due to a seemingly insatiable desire for new services has led to an increased an demand for large bandwidth capabilities and is driving the rapid deployment of advance communication networks. New optical networking is one example of advanced technologies that can efficiently support the exponential growth of data traffic through high performance bandwidth capabilities. Bandwidth is the rate at which information is communicated over a network. To support greater bandwidth and communication speed, modern communications systems utilizing advanced communication technology require communication devices to operate properly. The communication devices included in advanced networks are often complicated and sophisticated devices and to ensure information is communicated reliably, the communication devices usually have to operate within relatively stringent performance parameters. For example, communications over an optical network typically involves complicated engineering principals beyond the grasp of an average user. The complexities of advanced devices increase the difficulty in understanding how they are configured and operate. Network management and maintenance techniques directed to examining the operation of the communication devices are often very complicated and consume significant resources.
Due to the complicated nature of the devices included in an advanced communications network, the technicians performing the troubleshooting are usually required to be highly skilled and experienced technicians. It takes a significant number of years to become highly skilled and experienced in the design and operations of devices included in a single communication network architecture. Advanced communications network device maintenance and management operations typically involve complicated protocols with obscure precise codes that are syntax sensitive and produce obfuscated data results presented in complicated formats. Manual entry of the precise codes and reading of the obfuscated data often results in errors. Even if the codes are entered correctly and the data is read correctly, viable network management and maintenance requires accurate interpretation, thoughtful analysis and insightful recommendations. In addition to solving existing problems a network communication device is experiencing, it is even more advantageous to have information on potential problems so that preventive measures can be taken to avoid loss of bandwidth capabilities. It usually takes significant resource expenditure to obtain the expertise required to provide network maintenance that addresses existing and potential communication device problems.
Communications networks typically involve large numbers of devices and information is often communicated over a number of different architectures and platforms. Each architecture usually encompasses a variety of devices each with unique auditing scenarios. The vast number of different devices that are potentially involved in communicating data over a network dramatically increases the knowledge and expertise and exponentially increases the difficulty of managing and maintaining network communication devices. It is particularly troublesome and very expensive to perform management and maintenance audits of all the different communications devices that are typically included in a modern communications network.
Accordingly, what is required is a system and method that facilitates audits of network communication devices and presents results in a convenient and user friendly format.